


To Find and Belong

by night_reveals



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Diners, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_reveals/pseuds/night_reveals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It takes three bullets to stop Coulson."</p><p>Coulson eventually finds his way to SHIELD and Clint, decades-long detour be damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Find and Belong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phenylic (tascioni)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tascioni/gifts).



> Vivi asked for a Diner AU and I'm just not cut out for that stuff, so I cheated.
> 
> Coulson never joined SHIELD in his twenties, in this; instead he found his way to the Army.

It takes three bullets to stop Coulson. 

Blood freezes in his veins like his breath freezes in his chest, and Coulson is finally still after what feels like a decade of trudging through deep, never-ending sand. His vacation lasts a whole two minutes. 

The bullets miss his heart. The doctors bring Coulson stuttering back to life, but they don’t let him start up again, like they have so many times before. The military slaps commendations onto his tattered uniform and ships him stateside.

There is nothing waiting for him in America. It’s still “back home,” but only from force of habit. In Landstuhl he’s delirious from drugs when they ask him what airport he wants to fly into, and the one city name he remembers is New York.

It’s how he ends up walking in Central Park with no apartment, no food, and only his army duffel bag slung over his shoulder. It’s his first time in the Big Apple.

The movies don’t really do it justice.

 

For three months Coulson looks for work in the City. The security firms love his resume and handshake but balk when they see how much surgery he’s been through. He can’t sell things to save his life, and he fails the few consulting tests he’s given. 

Money isn’t exactly his problem. The army never paid him well, but he hasn’t spent on anything for a decade save the occasional imported candy bar. Coulson doesn’t know why he’s still here, in this city that he doesn’t have a history with and doesn’t even like most of the time; he just wishes he knew what his problem was, so he could fix it.

Coulson thought the army would be his calling forever. It still is, if he’s honest. He misses his men and women, young and brash though they were. One day he stands outside the recruitment office on 6th Avenue for ten awful minutes thinking that maybe they’ll let him back in if he pushes hard enough.

Canvassing neighborhoods once meant running in with guns and flash grenades, clearing rooms for his team to set up in. Now it means going from business to business with his resume and handshake, hoping for a chance. At first he only tries the office jobs, but they just place whatever paper he hands them into a _To be Filed_ drawer and tell him they’ll call if he “matches their company profile”. Coulson knows what that means: he might as well have just thrown a piece of paper in the trash. 

Three and a half months later and too many blocks away from his matchbox apartment, Coulson gives up.

 

The diner is dinky. 

It’s an underwhelming word for an underwhelming building that’s crumbling before Coulson’s eyes, the torn signs on its glass windows slightly pathetic. He feels a certain empathy for it. He has five bucks in his wallet and he’s getting thirsty. Why not?

“Tea, please,” he orders with a brief smile to a red-haired woman of about thirty-five. It’s good tea, though in Coulson’s experience it’s hard to mess up anything made with dried leaves.

A booming crash followed by a low, long hiss interrupts him in the middle of fishing a fiver out of his wallet. 

Coulson is out of his seat seconds later, headed to the kitchen where someone is screaming. His heart is pounding for the first time in three and a half months, adrenaline fueling his leap over the counter. Pain puts a certain edge on a human voice, an edge Coulson knows well and hears now.

A small fire blazes in the corner but he concentrates on helping the cook up from the floor and then out the kitchen door. Coulson has the fire under control in about fifteen seconds.

In the next two hours Coulson gives his statement to the NYFD and the NYPD and drinks two free cups of tea. The ambulance is driving off with the burned man, the diner closed for the day, when a harried woman, black and shaped like a fork with hair coiling out from her head, marches up to him.

“You need a job?” she asks, sounding angry at something.

“Well,” replies Coulson.

“Because that cook was just about the most incompetent man I’ve ever had the misfortune of employing. Can you flip burgers?”

“Doesn’t sound too hard, but I’ve never -- ” 

“Great. What do you want to be paid?”

Coulson quotes a number high enough for her to leave him alone.

“For that amount you’ll have to be the bouncer, too.”

Coulson takes another look at the dinky establishment he just put out a fire in. Seeming to notice his confusion, the woman grins a little wildly.

“The senior citizens get rowdy on Sunday mornings,” she says in explanation. “And if you take five dollars less than that, I’ll promise you’ll never have to deal with them. I’m Marnie, and I’ll be your boss.”

 _What the hell_ , thinks Coulson. He shakes her hand.

And that’s how his short but storied career in food services begins.

 

It’s actually not too bad, being a short-order cook. Besides the fact that Coulson has no idea how to make anything, courtesy of the US Army providing him food for a decade, he fits in pretty well with the tiny diner staff. Marnie teaches him “everything you need to know, promise” in a hectic two hour tutorial on cooking. It’s easy to remember it all: Coulson has years of being yelled at by drill instructors and sergeants and later colonels under his belt. Remembering how to run the Ice-E machine on his first try isn’t exactly a challenge.

It’s almost fun, actually. It turns out Marnie is almost as big of a Captain America fan as he is, and when once instead of a paycheck Marnie gives him a vintage collector’s card (one from 1945 still in the original plastic!), Coulson almost faints in glee. 

 

After a few months, whatever dubious glamor civilian life and a normal job once held begins to rub off. He still likes work, but he can’t ignore that he’s sleeping less and less at night. Two days ago he’d been woken by a car backfiring and hadn’t slept again for twenty-eight hours. Coulson doesn’t even let himself think the words “post-tramautic” much less the acronym PTSD, and for a few days at a time everything seems fine.

Until one summer day all the windows to the diner cave in, and Coulson knows it: he’s gone completely round the bend. Terrified that he’s dreaming or hallucinating it all, Coulson doesn’t move from his position at the stove, taking a moment at least to turn off the gas. If he’s going crazy, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. 

That’s when the screams from the diner patrons start, and Coulson hears it again, the edge of pain in someone’s voice. He’s out the kitchen door before he can even think.

 

The diner is dinky but, it turns out, well-built. Coulson gets everyone behind the counter, and when one _thing_ comes in with its pulsating blue gun-staff, Coulson brains it with a wrought-iron pan and takes the weapon. He kills a few dozen over the next hour, watching their bodies pile up around the diner. 

Terrified people stream into the building from outside, packing into the kitchen and then going out the back door and up the stairs to the cramped attic. Marnie is cowering next to him with her hand on the pot he used earlier, her fist tight around the heavy metal and her eyes set in anger. For a moment Coulson feels like he did in Afghanistan with his brothers, knowing his back was covered. 

In his distraction, Coulson fires at a black blur in front of his face that’s running down the street. He notices too late it’s a human. Before Coulson even has time to process his regret, an arrow whizzes for his face. The fact that Coulson has lived on tenterhooks for the past few weeks is the only thing that saves him. He ducks just in time, and he can swear he feels a rush of air over the top of his head. 

The man dressed in black pivots on his foot in the street and ducks his head in, grinning slightly. An honest-to-God arrow pouch edges out from behind his back, and Coulson stares.

“Sorry!” the man shouts into the shell of the diner.

“Me too,” replies Coulson automatically from behind the counter, the blue thrumming energy of the gun-staff pulsating above his head. 

The man turns to leave but seems to think better of it.

“This is too far from a subway entrance for some people to make a break for it. Think you can take more people back there?”

The diner looks small but Coulson knows there are three staircases leading to the warehouse type storage facilities that are rented out to various owners. If enough people push, they should be able to bust their way in.

“Yes,” says Coulson, yelling. An alien enters his field of vision, coming up behind the man. Coulson takes aim and fires, ignoring his new friend, who hit the floor as soon as Coulson raised his weapon.

Instead of being angry when he pops up, the man is laughing.

“Nice shot,” he takes the time to say, before he turns around and heads back into the melee. 

 

Clean-up is infinitely worse than the actual attack. Marnie has a break-down so Coulson takes over for a month, fighting insurance companies on her behalf and fishing broken glass out of what must be every single previously undiscovered corner of the diner. 

It’s three months before New York is recognizable. A whole fifteen block section is turned into pedestrian-traffic only, shrines made of candles and drawings from school children across the world dotting the avenues and broadways. Some of the buildings sit empty, precarious and gutted, while others have mainly cosmetic problems, certain floors roped off from access but otherwise still in use. In true American fashion, street corner stands sell “Come back, Loki” shirts with a crosshairs over the face of the demi-god in question. Looking out at the thousands of tiny shrines to children and mothers and fathers and teachers and bankers and diner workers up and down a dozen streets, not even Coulson, who firmly believes in fair trials for all, can really fault them. 

He could leave. But where would he go?

 

There’s a jingle at the door. A week ago Coulson installed a bell to mark their reopening, Marnie hugging him until she cried. She’d retaken her diner happily, bouncing back from its devastation with a strength and suddenness that surprised Coulson. 

“You open?” comes a voice a second later, and Coulson shuffles around in the back of the kitchen. It’s early, the sun peeking into the diner and illuminating the tiny dust motes that Coulson can never seem to get rid of no matter how much he scrubs. The human traffic outside is just beginning to pick up for the trek to work. 

“Yeah, just a second.” Coulson comes out the back. “What can I -- ”

Standing in the middle of the diner floor is the man from the day of the Attack, an uneasy look on his face.

He offers one awkward wave, his other hand braced on his hip. The stance he’s taken almost looks unbalanced, as if he’s trying to compensate for the loss of something. Coulson thinks he knows what the man is missing, but he also supposes that you can’t just walk around with arrows on your back in a city.

“Coffee?” offers Coulson, turning to the pot he’s just brewed.

They sit in mutual silence for ten minutes, a few other quiet patrons trickling in, Coulson obligingly pouring them coffee as well. They’re in a lull when the man, who hasn’t touched his coffee, leans forward.

“Not many people can duck my arrows.” 

“I was lucky,” replies Coulson easily, shrugging. 

The man makes a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. 

“Doubt it. There wasn’t much luck going around that day.”

Coulson shrugs again, wrong-footed. He’s thought of the man once or twice since the Attack, how capable and quick he’d been. At last the man takes a sip of his coffee.

“So what’s your name?” 

“Coulson. And you?”

“I’m Clint.”

At least Coulson can stop wondering. 

“Would you like anything to eat?”

“Actually,” Clint sets down the coffee and looks up, grinning a little. “I was wondering if you could come somewhere with me.”

 

On what eventually Coulson will refer to as his first day on the job, he leaves the diner with Clint, who leads them silently downtown. The building they stroll into has been spared the fighting completely, as far away from Midtown as it is, and the vaulted ceilings and hush inside remind Coulson of a cathedral. 

That is until a man wearing a suit, a silk tie, and some engine grease on his forehead stumbles out a door down a hallway and sees them both, nodding at Clint and grinning widely. 

“So, there’s the man of the hour!”

Coulson looks around for whoever this new man means, belatedly realizing that the man means him; even more belated is his realization that he is standing in front of Tony Stark, billionaire philanthropist superhero. Coulson boggles inside, somehow managing to keep a completely straight face.

“Shut it, Stark,” says Clint, crossing his arms quickly.

Ignoring the directive, Mr. Stark offers his hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr...?”

“Coulson.”

Their handshake is warm and brief. After it’s done Mr. Stark looks over Coulson. Uncharitably Coulson thinks that Mr. Stark looks a little manic, but hey. The guy is a billionaire. He probably does want he wants.

“You’ve had our Hawkeye in quite a tizzy,” says Mr. Stark, only confirming Coulson’s preliminary expectations of incomprehensibility. Hawkeye? Tizzy?

Interestingly, next to Coulson, Clint tenses up. 

“Cool it, Barton,” says Mr. Stark with a hand wave of boredom, cutting off whatever Clint might have said. “He’ll learn eventually that you like to dress up in leather and spandex and get high.” Then, with a brief smile, Mr. Stark adds, “Good relationships are built on trust. If you want to keep this one, you’ve got to be open -- ”

“Relationship advice from you? No thanks,” interrupts Clint, tugging at Coulson’s chef uniform and dragging him down a hall. 

It turns out to be the strangest day Coulson’s ever had.

 

Across the desk from Coulson sits a well-built man wearing an eye-patch, tendrils of black a few shades darker than the man’s skin stretching out from underneath it. His desk look cheap but sturdy, a definite preference for function over form. Clint had said he was Director “Fury”, but Coulson doesn’t know whether that was a joke or not, so he’s playing it safe by not saying anything. 

“I’m going to be frank with you, Sergeant Coulson.” The Director leans forward, slipping his fingers together. “You’re about two decades too late for any of our training programs.”

Coulson flexes his hands, telling himself he isn’t disappointed. 

“I’m retired, Sir,” he says in lieu of the dozen other things he wants to. The Director raises a lip in an approximation of a smile, a tiny flicker over his face.

“But people like us never _really_ retire, do we?” 

Coulson wonders exactly who ‘people like us’ is, but nods anyway.

“Barton is fighting for you.” Leaning back as if to better see a full picture, the Director watches him closely. “Has been for quite a while now.”

“I didn’t ask him to do that.” The view behind the Director is blue and never ending from how high up they are. In the distance, Coulson can make out a man washing a skyscraper's window across the way.

“I know you didn’t.” The Director sighs. “I’ve looked you up. Honors in what seems like every battle you’ve ever been in. More than a dozen American soldiers’ lives saved abroad. And you ducked one of Barton’s arrows. Can’t say I’ve heard of anyone doing that, before.” He takes a moment to think, then mutters, “Any human, at least.”

An empty silence stretches between them.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” replies Coulson truthfully. 

“You happy serving food?” Suddenly the Director is leaning forward again, pinning Coulson to his seat with just his gaze. “You want to go back to your old life? Back to retirement?”

Coulson gives the question the same amount of gravitas and thought that the Director (Director of what? He doesn’t even know yet) asks it with. He thinks of Marnie, how she needed him a month ago but maybe doesn’t so much now. He think of his tiny apartment with the leaky faucet and the nice, third-story view. He thinks of waking in the night filled with energy but lacking a purpose. 

“No, Sir, I do not,” he says, straightening subconsciously as he does.

“Good, because we need you.” The Director stands with no ceremony, gesturing for Coulson to join him. 

They reach across the table and shake hands, firm and dry. 

“Welcome to SHIELD, Agent Coulson.”


End file.
